Questing, Not Coasting
by justicemuffins
Summary: One-shots (and perhaps the occasional two-shot) revolving around Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Multiple and various pairings as well as gen-fics and character studies. Current Chapter: "Index (Phil & Melinda; Phil & Jasper)" Contains Spoilers for Cap 2 and s01e17!
1. Coy But Scrappy (GarrettBlake)

"Hey there, Scrappy. How ya feelin'?"

Blake makes a conscious effort towards opening his eyes. It feels like an elephant sat on his chest and, considering he got stomped on by Deathlok, he supposes the comparison isn't all that far off. Still, bleary eyed, doped up to his eyeballs and yet somehow still in pain and discomfort, he has to wonder what he'd done to deserve the fresh hell that is John Garrett's company. He makes a vague, ineffectual grunt around the ventilator occupying his airway, but somehow Garrett seems to get the message as a shit-eating grin lights up his features.

"Knew you'd pull through," the man says, clapping him on the shoulder.

The motion is just jarring enough to wring a dull moan out of him. Garrett, straddling his chair backwards, winces.

"Whoops. Maybe lay off the buddy-buddy stuff for a while, huh?" he comments, grinning again.

Blake does his best to glare, but he's fairly certain the amount of painkillers he's on don't lend much to the look. Garrett continues to watch him, smiling that insufferable smile of his, but it's gone soft at the edges. The longer they sit in silence, the more the seasoned agent seems to lack his usual roughness. It's not as though Blake has the ability to respond or talk back in any way, so he can hardly be good company.

Garrett doesn't seem to mind. When it doesn't seem like his fellow agent will be speaking again anytime soon, Blake allows his eyes to slip shut once more. He lies there, letting the ventilator breathe for him, feeling each breath it forces into his battered body. He'd like very much to go back to sleep, but it's like having an itch he just can't scratch; his injuries make him just uncomfortable enough that sleeping isn't an option.

"Hey."

Blake pries his eyes open and finds Garrett again. The smile is gone, replaced by a slight frown.

"Looks like you're hurtin' some."

Blake is in no mood to be teased about his pain tolerance. Okay, so, he's not the in-the-field action hero like Garrett and he does most of his work behind a desk, but he'd done his job today, hadn't he? Just because people like Garrett think less of him, think of him as a desk jockey, doesn't mean he doesn't do a solid day's work. He's done that today, he feels, so what more could Garrett want of him?

"Hold up. I'm gonna flag a nurse down, see if we can't get them to up your meds a twitch."

Garrett pats him on the shoulder—this time with a great deal more care—before rising and disappearing from the room. Well, that certainly wasn't what Blake had been expecting. The rough and tumble agent tends to be just that; gentle isn't exactly in his vocabulary. It isn't that Garrett's uncaring, it's just that, well… he's a Clint Eastwood. A John Wayne. He's a goddamn cowboy, is what he is.

Still, he hardly seems it when he returns, trailing respectfully behind a nurse.

"Having a bit of trouble sleeping, Agent Blake?" the young man asks him.

Blake hesitates but nods minutely. The nurse goes about fiddling with the IV lines before he steps back, smiling at Blake and holding a clipboard before him.

"Alright, that should kick in shortly," the nurse says. "I'm on shift all night, so if there's anything else, just hit your call button."

Garrett thanks the retreating nurse just as Blake begins to feel the medication kicking in. The discomfort that had come with breathing eases and he's able to relax, eyes sliding shut once more in relief. He hears the chair beside his bed creak as Garrett settles into it once more.

"Oh boy, you needed that," he observes. "Take it easy for a bit, make sure they give you plenty of the good stuff. You earned it after that stomping you took and that little trick you played."

Blake raises his eyebrows, cracking his eyes open to peek at Garrett curiously. The other agent rocks forward in his seat.

"Firing five shots to disguise the tracking bullet? Always knew you were a clever little bastard, but never figured you for _that_ clever," Garrett answers. "Never figured you for the stand your ground type, either. But color me surprised. And pleased."

Blake wants to blame the drugs. Because no, no way in hell is John Garrett coming on to him. Clearly his drug-addled mind is making connections where there are none to be had.

"So I hear you like Scorpios," Garrett says, his grin widening. "Whaddaya say when they give you the all-clear to check out of this place I take you out for a little… _celebratory_ dinner. Sitwell told me about this great place downtown where they—"

Blake begins to drift off as Garrett slowly rambles on about microbrewed ale and homemade wines and… something about dumplings, he thinks. His last thought before his lets sleep claim him is that it might be crazy that Garrett is trying to ask him out on a date, but it's probably crazier that he's considering accepting.


	2. Index (Phil & Melinda, Phil & Jasper)

One of the first things they begin doing is making a roster of sorts: known allies of S.H.I.E.L.D., known agents of HYDRA, those who are alive, those who are dead, and those they have no answers for. Melinda finds him, late at night, pouring over printed pages of rows upon rows of agent identification photos, bound together like sort of morbid high school year book.

He's going through all of them with a marker, circling the pictures of those with HYDRA, crossing off the dead. It will be useful to keep with them, but the task must be painful. It would be to any of them. He hesitates, the tip of the marker hovering uncertainly over one photo in particular. He pulls back, only to return, the tip of the marker touching the page and beginning to bleed through the paper as he continues to waver. She watches him do this time and again, unable to move past the photo.

Walking up behind him, she spies dotted spots of marker ink at the corner of Jasper Sitwell's photograph and lays a hand on his shoulder.

"You have to let him go," Melinda instructs.

Phil shakes his head and leans back in his seat. He caps the marker and taps it against his open palm, a heavy frown settled on his face. "Something's not adding up."

She knows that, of everyone, this particular betrayal has struck Phil the hardest. Phil had been Jasper's S.O., the one who had recruited him who had worked with him from the beginning, who had vetted him. More than that, they had been friends. Or so they thought, anyway. He's dealing with the betrayal of someone he thought he could trust and the loss of a good friend—because she knows that, whatever he feels about Jasper's shift in loyalties, Phil is mourning his death.

"He was with HYDRA," Melinda says, firmly, though not unkindly. "And he was confirmed to have been killed by the Winter Soldier. Let him go, Phil."

"But it doesn't make sense," Phil insists. "Him? With HYDRA? I've known him since—"

"What about Garrett?" Melinda asks. "You've known him since Director Fury recruited you. Do you have the same reservations about where you think his loyalties lie?"

"That's different," Phil says stubbornly.

"I understand," Melinda says, "that this hurts, and that it seems like the people closest to you, the ones that you've trusted for years, have all turned. But that's not the case. You still have your team and you still have me and that won't change. But you have to accept the facts."

Phil is silent for a time before slowly uncapping the marker in his hand and leaning forward in his seat. It's not without reservation that he crosses out Jasper's photo as a confirmed death, but the action allows her to believe she's gotten through to him. Until he stops there. He moves on to the next photograph, refusing to circle Jasper's in order to denote his allegiance to HYDRA.

"I am accepting the facts," Phil says. "And the facts are that we don't have all the facts yet. So until I'm given something that tells me otherwise, I'm going with what I know to be true: Jasper Sitwell would never willingly align himself with HYDRA."

Melinda bites back a sigh. Phil has always had a stubborn streak a mile wide, but ever since his return to the field, it only seems to have gotten wider; something she had previously been sure was impossible. She knows she can't sway him on this point, but watching him obsessively move through the roster, she hopes to sway him on another.

"You should get some rest," she suggests.

"After," he murmurs distractedly.

"Phil," she says, grabbing his wrist and halting his progress. "Put it away."

"Melinda, we need to do this," Phil says, looking at the profiles staring back at him, rather than meeting her gaze. He adds on, quietly, "_I_ need to do this."

Rather than continue trying to force him to stop, she decides to meet him half way. She's greeted by a look of wary curiosity as she loosens her grip around his wrist and slips into the seat beside him.

"Then let me help you," she says.

There is a brief pause where she can practically see the gears in his mind turning, before Phil gives in and allows her the use of the spare marker he'd brought. They sit silently side by side, compiling their index as the night wears on and reports continue to reach them from all corners of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reach.

She does get him to stop, eventually. He talks himself to sleep, in the end, as she sits silently and listens to him ramble on about Jasper. She listens to him recall the early years of their association, watches the faint smile that forms on his face as he remembers a passing remark or action in years past. She allows him to divulge precious details of a treasured friendship because someone—_someone_—should know of them other than him. Someone should know Jasper the way he had.

It's only the following morning, when Melinda is binding their work together, that she flips to the page with Jasper's photo on a whim. To her surprise, the photo has been reprinted and carefully cut out and pasted over the old one—the one that Phil had crossed out. This new photo bears only a question mark.

What that question mark means, she can't say.

And she doesn't ask.

With a shake of her head, Melinda finishes binding the index and does what Phil can't: she closes it and puts it away.


End file.
